


Death and it's deserving

by withered



Series: these violent delights [3]
Category: Iron Man (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Forced Experimentation, Gen, Hint of Winteriron, Howard Stark's A+ Parenting, Maria Stark's A+ Parenting, Post-Captain America: Civil War (Movie), abusive parenting
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-09
Updated: 2019-02-09
Packaged: 2019-10-24 23:44:27
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 980
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17713943
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/withered/pseuds/withered
Summary: With every punch and kick, every sting of every cut, every nerve sharpened to burning, every crunch of bone, every drop of blood; Tony hopes that the day will come when he doesn’t open his eyes in the aftermath, hopes that one day, he’ll fail.But he doesn’t. He never does.Sometimes he’s grateful; those days are few and far between.





	Death and it's deserving

**Author's Note:**

  * For [lovinthepizzalife](https://archiveofourown.org/users/lovinthepizzalife/gifts).



 

Tony never forgets that his parents do not love him.

He thinks that’s why he’s lived so long.

Babies, he figures out quickly, irritate them; his mother bemoans their neediness and his father finds them pointless.

Tony learns that he cannot afford to be either.

He babbles quietly to the box of spare parts until he finally learns how to put them together, coaxing companionship and purpose from their broken bits and bobs. If Tony will not know love, perhaps he can make it.

His first circuit is completed and operational by age four; the media praises his independence, his evident genius, and his parents preen.

The invention is put aside, displayed like a trophy; evidence of an experiment that’s passed its first test.

Except it’s not the circuit board that his parents so value, but him.

Tony Stark is the culmination of his mother’s scheming, the successor to his family’s legacy, his father’s greatest creation.

He is not their son.

He is simply theirs.

An object, _a thing_ , and as his creators, they can do with him what they wish.

And they do.

∞

With every punch and kick, every sting of every cut, every nerve sharpened to burning, every crunch of bone, every drop of blood; Tony hopes that the day will come when he doesn’t open his eyes in the aftermath, hopes that one day, he’ll fail.

But he doesn’t. He never does.

Sometimes he’s grateful; those days are few and far between.    

While his father’s expectations, his little tests, are easily understood and easily accepted, his mother – his mother can never seem to decide.

It makes her worse.

There are some games that are easier to discern, the way her red nails dig into the flesh of his cheek as she coos, “Did Howard do that to you, darling?”  that gets the immediate reply of, “No, Mama, I fell.”

But there are others, others he cannot seem to understand until it’s too late.

Like when she’ll consider a gun a little too long, play with the bullets; and even slides them into the chamber. It’s a tease, he knows it is, but when she points it to her head just to scare him, he falls for it.

She’ll laugh, beautiful and melodious, and Tony thinks he could love her.

But then she’ll stop abruptly, red lips pulled tight before berating, “Now, darling, what have we said about tears?”

Then she’ll point the gun at him, and everything inside him stills.

His face is wet with tears he shouldn’t have shed, and he knows the punishment.  Hates it. But knows it all the same.

 “They’re a sign of weakness,” he echoes hollowly.

Again though, she smiles. “You learn so quickly, my darling. If only the lessons would stick.”

The gun will go off, and there’s a new bullet in the wall.

It’s so close.

But never close enough.

“Darling,” she’ll tut, “I know what you’re trying to do: you’d rather it be you, don’t you?”

And he won’t reply because no answer is right, but she’s never needed his participation, volunteered or otherwise, “Death is for the deserving, and you, my darling, do not deserve.”

When Jarvis comes to clean the room, the smell of gunpowder and his mother’s perfume are near indistinguishable, like the alcohol on his father’s breath.  

Jarvis will give him the spent casing, and Tony will add it to his necklace.

The bruises fade. The bones mend. The burns peel off to reveal new skin. And he’s made anew.

The bullets though, the bullets he’ll keep.

Each one a reminder to every day he wakes up: _you do not deserve._

∞

Despite it all, Ana and Edwin are the cruelest, Tony decides.

They’ll clean up the mess. They’ll put him to bed. They’ll nurse his wounds, whisper apologies against his skin where they’ve pressed kisses, and tell him always the contrary – _you do, you do, we love you, you deserve everything –_

He believes them.

It makes everything hurt so much more.

∞

When his parents die, there’s a cold that’s settled against his bones like ice woven into his skin.

With the best money could buy, their faces in the casket are set in expressions of quiet peace, restfulness, so completely opposite to the way they’d died.

The blood in the video, retrieved from the night of the accident, is red against the whiteness of the snow, the black of the shadows.

All Tony remembers is the red. There was so much of it.

The cold digs in.

When Obadiah slips him the family ring, red just like his mother’s nails, like Howard’s knuckles, like the blood Tony tastes on his teeth; the facts can no longer be ignored: Death is deserved, and Tony is not worthy.

 ∞

His father used to call him a monster, an abomination, on bad days. Days when he’d forget that he was responsible; when he’d forgotten that the only reason he’d had Tony at all was to get to play god.

Tony thinks he had a point, but his father is no more, and Tony gets to call himself whatever he wants.

With his blood red family ring on his hand, his mother’s red smile and the quiet stillness he’s grown accustomed to, they call him Death, and with an ironic twist in his lips, Tony accepts.

∞

The Winter Soldier stares up at him; the fight sucked out of his limbs without Rogers forcing life unto his unwilling bones.

The Bunker is quiet except for their breathing.

His throat is bared in the most primal of submissions. He knows this game too. He knows it just as well as Tony does.

Half to taunt him, half to test in the same fashion his mother always did, Tony asks, “Do you deserve Death?”

And with the same blue eyes, sick with serum to keep him living, Barnes whispers into the cold, “No.”

 

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> A result of Pizza's bad influence in my tumblr inbox.  
> [Click here if you want to find out more about my work](https://everything-withered.tumblr.com/)


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